Love in Three Acts
by AnneStan86
Summary: She is thirty-two when he stumbles upon her again. - Excerpt from Chapter Three AU
1. Eighteen

_**Love in Three Acts**_

_Disclaimer_: The author retains no rights to any recognizable features of the following story. What the author does own is whatever her imagination produces for the public to read without monetary gain.

* - *

She was eighteen when he last saw her.

A wide-eyed girl filled with such naïveté that it made one wonder how innocence could be retained when so much bad was happening. A girl who used color to substitute for the face that she was hardly distinguishable in a crowd to the point that your eyes burned upon glancing her way. A girl that memory refused to let go of even though you wished for nothing more than to forget her.

She was eighteen when he last saw her, even though it still feels like he had been in her presence only the day before.

The girl with the obsession that still had the ability to make him cringe when he thought of the lengths taken to win his affections and, ultimately, his heart, despite the seven years that had lapsed since their encounter. The girl who laughed off how broken the life she had at home really was--he was certain to this day that his sister was the only one who knew the severity of which it was shattered--and the disintegration of her parents' marriage, forcing her decision to stay in the city they had traded for Pittsburgh. The girl with the eccentricities that his nineteen-year-old self found weird but he viewed as her coping mechanism at twenty-six.

He supposed that it could have been possible for them to keep in touch over the years but when the opportunity to have her completely separated from his life had arisen, he had jumped at the chance to have her cut from his life without a second thought. He was a college man with goals and aspirations and a career to be chosen. He was a fledgling wizard-in-training that knew that there could only be one in his family and refused to let the honor befall upon either of his younger siblings. The last thing he wanted or needed was a goofy girl approaching womanhood following him around on his college campus. He had gotten enough of that all through elementary, middle and high school.

She had offered them all a chance to speak up in those few months before graduation happened, to ask her to stay in the city she loved so dearly for the next four years just as they had done just a year prior. The visual of that night is so glaringly bright in his head, even with the amount of time passed, for it was the night that they had all signed the papers to execute their relationship with the auburn-haired girl. The night that she lost some of that innocence and naïveté that she had carried to get her through the shambles that happened to be her life.

Her parents could not afford to send her to an out-of-state college, she had told them during that night. While she was still living in New York with the Russo family, her parents' address read Pittsburgh and that was the address that counted in the eyes of the college that she wanted to attend. Unless someone could vouch that she was indeed living in New York and had a residence to call her own there, she would have to pack up and move to the one place that she had gone through such great lengths to avoid. She had dreamt of attending NYU but would have to settle for the University of Pennsylvania if no other option was presented.

We'll miss you, his father had said. I'm sure U of P is a great school, was the answer his mother had given. Well... was all his brother could offer before running off. And all he had told her was don't forget to write since his insides were cheering and dancing at the notion of finally shaking her from him. The only person in the family that she had thought of to be partially her own to be affected by this turn of events was his sister and that was expected since they were best friends.

The months leading up to graduation were silent. She was hurt by their lack of care and their unwillingness to provide her with merely an address to save her from the family she had wanted to forget existed, especially when they had been more than willing to open up their home to her not so long before. Her way of showing that was to retreat inside herself and communicate with only her best friend who in return spoke to the rest of the household in glares that showed contempt and disgust. And since they all knew that the damage had already been done and therefore did not have any ideas on how to reverse it, they left her alone and only approached when a question needed to be answered by her specifically.

She had not stayed long after graduation ended. Two weeks, four days and fifteen hours was the exact amount of time that she remained within the Russo household, leaving her room exclusively for packing material and food since school was no longer an issue. The only person who dared to visit her in those weeks was the one who still remained on speaking terms with the girl, the only one who showed any emotion to lose someone who had been such an intricate part of their lives that they were blind to just how great a role she had played. She only stayed two weeks, four days and fifteen hours for the simple reason that it had taken that long to pack, find affordable movers to haul her belongings across state lines and secure a ticket that would not drain her savings.

None of them were given the chance to share in tear-filled and heartfelt goodbyes like they had foolishly expected. They had been hurt by her sudden lack of emotion towards them and her decision to make her break from them abrupt--him more so than the rest given their history--but it did not take long for any of them to realize that they were solely at fault in the matter. They had chosen to ignore her subtle pleas for help, had chosen to give her well wishes instead of an option better than the one presented. In short, they would have to lie in the bed that their ignorance had made and no amount of hindsight was going to change anything.

No one really knew the repercussions that her leaving their lives would entail until the weeks that followed her departure. His younger brother, who took pride in the fact that he was not one who would fall under the category of _normal_, took long pauses whenever he spoke as to make certain the right thing fell from his lips. It was as though he was afraid the very idiosyncrasies that made him _Max Russo_ would cause his family to disregard him the way they had done to her. His sister withdrew and became extraordinarily more sullen than usual, snapping at whoever deigned to ask what was wrong which caused his parents to second guess their every move made and word spoken.

But what he never expected was how her moving away affected him. He found that his success was not as satisfactory without someone there to compliment with that look of complete adoration that she always had. He found that he missed having someone there to listen to his ideas and notions without getting that _okay, you're weird_ expression on their face halfway through the conversation. He missed her laugh, the way she got excited over he simplest things, even the garish costumes that she created for her daily wear.

She was eighteen when he last saw her and he would be damned if he did not miss her.

**TBC...**


	2. TwentyFive

**_Chapter Two_**

She is twenty-five when he sees her again.

She is sitting cross-legged on a bench outside of a public library with a notebook resting on one knee, hunched over their open pages as her hand glides over them with a pen. Her brow is furrowed in an expression of deep concentration, the tip of a thumb is caught between her lips as the pen makes continuous movements across the page, and he can see the shifts that time has made to make the girl he knew into the woman who is no more than a stranger. She is no longer the wide-eyed girl filled with innocence and naïveté that had once floated around the boundaries of his life.

She is twenty-five when he sees her again and seven years all too quickly feels like seventy.

He continues to watch her from the sidewalk bordering the library, half of him wishing he could turn away and act as though he had never spied her while the other half cannot help but keep his eyes trained on her. She has paused from her furious scribbling to tuck an errant lock of auburn hair behind her ear—hair that is no longer a cascading fall landing midway down her back but a complicated style that barely brushes her shoulders—and he notices the black ink of a tattoo on her wrist. He can also make out two extra pairs of earrings twinkling from her ear.

He realizes then that the girl he had known so well is officially a part of the past and he has no idea what to do with the vision in front of him. The girl he had known had been deathly afraid of temporary tattoos and her first ear piercing had been a major ordeal since she could barely stand even the slightest amount of pain, only going through with it because Alex was getting hers done as well. The girl he had known would never have been caught dead in an oversized hooded sweatshirt in shades of black and a pair of ripped jeans like her current counterpart. And he realizes that he had played a part in creating the woman that made him ache for the girl he had known.

Her head lifts from the notebook and her eyes sweep across her surroundings as though she can feel his scrutiny—had her eyes had always been such a bright shade of emerald—and he has to tamper down his sudden urge to dive behind a parked car to hide. He wills he feet to begin walking towards her position on the bench because he figures that she deserves to know that it is not a stalker watching her but an old friend. As he grows closer, he sees her eyes narrow momentarily as her mind works out how she could possibly know him before widening comically in recognition.

"Justin Russo, never thought I'd see you again," she greets him almost sardonically. Closer now, he can see that her emerald eyes that have been lined and shaded with black are hardened in the way that eyes become when their owner is forced to grow up too fast. "Did you get lost on your way to somewhere else?"

He runs a hand through his hair and shifts slightly on his feet, finding that he is unequipped to deal with a new attitude to go with the new look. The time and distance she has spent away from his sister has made them more alike than all their years spent together in close proximity.

"Ah, no, I'm actually on a sort of vacation. My flight was actually cancelled and my boss told me to take a few days off instead of immediately booking the next one out. Something about cutting cost and labor and looking good to the higher ups..." he trails off, wondering when he became the one who rambled to fill awkward space.

She unfurls her body and he sees that the rips in the jeans are not designer label like his sister's but proof that time affects material objects as well as people. "How unfortunate that you happened to land in a place that was on your list of places _not _to visit in your lifetime."

In his mind, he wants nothing more but to make the same comment to her but he finds himself biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. For the woman in front of him used to be the type of girl who despised the rain and made every excuse not to venture out in it if she did not have the right accoutrements. It strikes him funny that she would be living in the city of Seattle where the rainfall averaged out to be nine months out of twelve and he again bites his tongue to keep the chuckle from leaving his chest.

"I would have thought that you'd be somewhere like Los Angeles, pursuing a career in design. Wasn't that the ultimate dream that you had?" he says, wishing he could gather the words back into his mouth and swallow them down upon seeing her eyes narrow dangerously. Besides, how ultimate could that dream really have been since he already had the knowledge that she would become a famous writer?

"Dreams change, Justin, you should know that better than anybody. How _is_ Juliet, by the way?" she asks, her tone almost mocking.

And he supposes he should hate her for the question, especially since she knows that the break up with his first love was excruciatingly painful for his teenage self. He still finds himself comparing the women he dates to the silken-haired vampire. However, he cannot hate someone who has every right to be spiteful and vindictive towards him since he was the one who helped in forming this new attitude. "I wouldn't really know," he mumbles.

She smiles in the cruel way that people do when their point is proven despite every argument to the contrary. "Life's a bitch, ain't it?" She lets out a laugh that is truly scathing and it cuts him to his soul.

He clears his throat once, twice and then a third time before speaking again. "How was Pittsburgh?" He asks this because he wants some reassurance that his family had not made a mistake all those years ago by turning their backs on her need, so that he can hate himself a little less and lessen the feeling that they had fed her to the wolves.

She tilts her head an inch and stares directly into his eyes as though she can tell that he is not asking just for curiosity sake. "If you want me assuage your guilt, you came over here for nothing. The fighting still happened, the cheating still occurred and my mother called me nightly to alleviate her worries or to pick her up from whatever shit hole that she found herself in. It was only the location that changed."

And it is then that it hits him, the magnitude of what their decision that day seven years before had caused. The jokes that Alex made, the brief comments that Harper spoke, barely touched just how shattered her supposedly happy home really was. They had taken an innocent and naïve girl's hope and turned her into a bitter woman who he doubted would ever regain some of what she had lost. He knew at that moment that the Future Harper he had met was buried under various degrees of life experience that never should have happened.

She tucks the same lock of hair behind the same ear and the sleeve to her sweatshirt slides down again, enabling him the chance to view up close the Chinese symbols that mar her pale wrist. "It means broken," she tells him for she has seen his gaze pinpoint to the location.

She reaches for a bag that she has placed underneath the bench and slips her notebook inside, obviously determining that their conversation is at an end as she stands. "I once wished for nothing more than for you to notice me like you did today. Now, I wish you had just walked away without giving me a second glance. Enjoy the rest of your vacation, Justin, and tell your family I said hello."

He is still reeling from their encounter but before she can take more than three steps away from him, he cannot stop his hand from shooting out and grasping the tattooed wrist. Pulling her so that the front of her body is flush with his, he has come to the decision that if this is to be their ending then it will be on his terms. She is standing so still that she could be mistaken for a mannequin as he dips his head down and touches his lips to hers.

It lasts only mere seconds before she rips her lips and body from his and her hand connects to his cheek in a violent manner. Her emerald eyes flash with anger and he knows that he has crossed a boundary that would have only been acceptable when she was eighteen and he nineteen. She does not speak as she turns from him and rushes away before he can even think to seize her again, leaving him with a burning handprint on his cheek and the wish for time reversal at the forefront of his mind once again.

She is twenty-five when he sees her again and for the first time in his twenty-six years, he feels like an adult.

**TBC...**


	3. ThirtyTwo

**_Author's Note_**: I apologize for the fact that this is so late in showing up and I hope you all will for give me. I hope the length more than makes up for it though.

**Chapter Three**

She is thirty-two when he stumbles upon her again.

The wide-eyed girl with the numerous eccentricities had been lost to circumstance while the sullen young woman that had taken her place seems to have disappeared as well. The woman he has encountered after another seven-year lapse in time is appears to be a melding of the two, a combination of the features that suited both of her counterparts the best. Soft curves have since replaced hard lines, a relaxed smile that beckons people to her frames guarded eyes that allow a certain distance, darkness precariously balances the light. As many times that she has entered his mind in brief doses over the last seven years, he is certain that this version of the woman will remain as a testament to his previous cowardice and stupidity.

She is thirty-two when he stumbles upon her again and his last minute decision to attend yet another wedding is the reason behind their paths crossing once more.

It is the fifth wedding this year that he has been forced by the bonds of friendship to attend, the number of people he can call for a spontaneous drink on a Friday night dwindling to the amount that can be counted on one's hand. He does not begrudge them their happiness or the fact that they were able to get their acts together and settle down to a family. He only wonders—as he sits at a table cloaked in silvery white and watches the dancing couples bask in their contentment—how he ended up the lonesome guest who gets drunk off cheap champagne while everyone he knows pities him.

Had there not been a plan in place for his life? Top honors in high school that would continue on to being top honors in college that would allow him a top career, winning the competition that would name him as the family wizard and marrying the woman who would complete the vision he had in his head of the idealistic life by the time he was thirty. But none of that plan had ever happened except for the part of him earning top honors in high school. Max had won the competition, he was still working in the same position for the same company that had thrilled him at twenty-three, and both of his siblings had significant others while he was still trying to find the ability to get past a first date.

The failures of his life leave him with a bitter taste in his mouth much like the aftertaste from the champagne that dulls his senses and has become a comfort. Numerous glasses have been consumed since the reception first went underway and the fruity nature of the drink is no longer capable of covering the alcoholic truth of the liquid. His indulgence in consuming the amount of golden liquid that he has brings upon feelings of fuzziness in his head that he enjoys and revels in, fuzziness that he will curse and regret the next morning when it morphs into pain. It will become the harsh consequence of his decision to attend the reception instead of leaving directly after the groom kissed the bride, as is his usual course of action.

However, as he makes his way to the bar for a glass of water to dilute the alcohol in his system, the brief flash of dark red that he spots out of the corner of his eye reminds him of just why he has chosen to remain among sickening sweet couples instead of returning to his empty apartment. At the wedding, he had situated himself in his normal position in the church—the aisle seat on the fifth pew from the back, far enough inside to be mistaken for being a part of the festivities but close enough to the door to slip away undetected during the kiss—with every intention to escape to the cold beer waiting in the refrigerator back home. And he would have been successful had he not let his eyes drift over the line of bridesmaids that were chosen for the event.

For the bridesmaid at the end of the line, dressed in a strapless knee-length dress the color of cranberries ripening in the sun, was none other than the woman he had left in Seattle. Full lips painted the color of the dress, baby's breath entangled in auburn waves and smoky eyes that held a blank expression that he was certain rivaled his own, he had to do a double-take to be certain that his eyes were not deceiving him. If it had not been for the familiar bit of black ink that adorned the peaches-and-cream skin of her wrist, he would have still believed that she was someone else.

The soft scent of floral perfume interlaced with the sharpness of cinnamon candies that permeated the basement bedroom long after she was gone encompasses him and he knows that she is standing right next to him without having to look. His feet suddenly feel the urge to run but he silently wills them to stay put by focusing on the glass of water in his hand.

"Can I get a shot of anything that does not resemble champagne?" she asks the bartender in a voice that indicates that she has been to one too many weddings as well.

The man, stocky in build and with a face that makes him look seventeen, pours a generous amount of the dark liquid that his father used to consume when his sister was a troublemaking teenager. He assumes that Harper will reject the whiskey for something with less of a bite but his assumption is negated by her act of immediately tossing back the drink as though it were nothing more than simple water. She motions for the empty glass to be refilled and once it has, breathes out, "God, I hate weddings."

The bartender chuckles and shakes his head slightly at her words. "I thought the prerequisite for being a bridesmaid was that you had to hold them in some sort of favor."

"That's only if you were an original choice. I could be at my apartment right now, curled up in my pajamas and a good book right now if the original hadn't gotten food poisoning at the bachelorette party last night," she sighs wistfully.

"So what is the prerequisite for being an alternate?" The bartender chuckles again and Justin finds that the sound has begun to grate on his last nerve.

"There are three, actually. The first being that the bride is my editor's spoiled, whiny, twerp of a niece and I need to be in my editor's good graces if I want to actually have a career. And the other two are the same for all us last minute alternates. I live twenty minutes away, even in traffic, and I fit the dress. Lucky me," Harper explains, holding her glass up in a mock toast before downing her second shot of whiskey. "At least it's almost over and I can go back to my life looking like a saint."

The bartender smirks and Justin feels the sudden urge to physically wipe the expression from his face tingling the tips of his fingers. It grows stronger as the man—no longer the good ol' boy that he had appeared to be at the beginning of the conversation—leans over the counter towards Harper and speaks in a lowered voice that is full of innuendo. "Why don't we go somewhere later and we can see just how much of a saint you can be?"

To a stranger, the friendly expression on her face never alters. However, Justin is no stranger and the brief flicker of disgust in her emerald eyes has him moving closer to wrap an arm around her waist in a protective grip that could be misconstrued as jealous. He feels her tense at the foreign touch but she immediately relaxes as she turns her head to catch his gaze just before his lips brush against hers. He knows that she is uncomfortable with the gesture and would have slapped him like she had seven years before if the sleazy bartender was not bearing witness.

"Sorry I'm late, darling, but the meeting ran long and traffic was a nightmare. How was the wedding?" His tone is an exaggerated drawl and he silently pleads with her to go along with the act.

She might hate his guts but he knows that she would rather deal with the devil she knows than the one that is a stranger. That is his thinking as she dares to glance at the bartender once more before turning her body to face his, wrapping both arms around his neck and running manicured fingertips through the hairs at the nape. The action is causing tremors that Justin has not felt since his first girlfriend to run down his spine and through his legs, tremors that are only intensified when Harper rises the few inches it takes to connect her lips to his.

Maybe it is because the kiss is a part of the act to discourage the slimy bartender that he decides to hold her a little tighter. Maybe it is because he knows that she would never ruin the act by hitting him that he decides to take it a step further than what she probably intended for originally. Or maybe it is because he has dreamt of this exact moment since the last time they met and the alcohol earlier consumed has relaxed his barriers that he angles his head slightly more to gain better access. Whatever the reason, he decides to make it worth his while if the consequences are going to wind up biting him in the ass anyway.

A moan is heard from deep in her throat and the need for oxygen that has become too great is the cause for the break in the kiss. Harper looks absolutely sated for the briefest of moments before her eyes widen in remembrance of where she is and whom she is with. As they stare at one another, neither notices that the bartender has decided to cut his losses and move on to the next single woman ordering a drink. Neither do they notice that the dancing couples have come to a halt and have crowded around the couple in the spotlight shoving cake at each other. What they do notice is that the air between them has shifted into something that is unrecognizable to them both and feelings experienced only once by only one have arisen so suddenly that it is jarring to Harper.

This is why, before Justin can gain another thought in his mind, Harper tears herself out of his arms and flees like she had done after another kiss seven years prior in Seattle. She has worked hard to build a wall around her heart, keeping dark-haired men with dark eyes that melt the soul out as to not be hurt again. Fourteen years she has been successful in keeping it maintained, focusing on education and then building her career without giving pause to think about having a social life. She may not be ecstatic with the prospect of not having a husband and kids waiting for her at home but she is content.

Well, she was content until she kissed the man who had caused her to erect that wall to begin with and now she can feel it all crumbling down around her. Bit by bit, the floodgate is being released and tears that have not fallen in over a decade are beginning to cloud her vision as she reaches the doors leading out of the reception hall. All she wants is to gain her escape, return to her apartment and shed these tears so she can work on forgetting the events of the day.

But it seems fate is not on her side as her escape is impeded just feet from the place where her jacket and purse are being stored by the grasp of strong fingers on her upper arm. The dormant training of her body to instinctively know his proximity has been reawakened by earlier actions that she is beginning to regret and as he whips her around, another instinct she has honed comes out as her open palm swiftly comes up and lands against cheek with enough strength to force his head sideways. She tries to break from his grip but he holds firm and the heat from her unshed tears burn her eyes as she stares up at him, hating the fact that he can see that he has broken her but taking a sort of pride at watching normally tanned skin turn pink then red from her hand.

The hand not holding onto her comes up to massage his jaw line and he lets out a stream of air through his nose, trying to calm the raging inferno made up of anger and frustration roaring just beneath the surface. "Damn it, Harper," he curses. "Do you have to hit me every time we see each other again?"

"I don't know, Justin. Do you have to kiss me every time we see each other again?" she spats out. She tries to twist her arm out of his grip again but to no avail. "Can you just let me go?"

He winces upon hearing the tired and broken quality of her voice, knowing that he had caused it but not knowing how to fix it. "I think if I remember correctly, sweetheart, _you_ kissed _me_ this time."

"I only kissed you to keep from being hit on by some guy who thinks the single bridesmaid cliché is true. Now, let me go," she says, expelling the last four words through a clenched jaw and punctuating each one with a jerk.

The noise in the hall is beginning to grow louder and glancing over his shoulder at the double doors slowly opening, he know that they will soon have an audience and Harper will have her chance to leave him behind once and for all. The icy fingers of panic snake across his skin and wrap around his insides as he realizes that letting that happen would slowly kill him. Unwilling to let reality go unresolved and his future be amassed fantasies, he slides his hand down until it holds her wrist and drags the protesting Harper behind him as he quickly searches for an unlocked door.

His is successful in his search when the fifth one gives way to reveal a janitor's closet and he forcefully lobs the woman into it before ducking inside as well. He fumbles around the closet in search for the light and when found, the illumination gives way to a sight that he is more than prepared to encounter. Her arms are crossed over her chest; her full lips are pursed to form a straight line that is white with contained fury as two smoldering emeralds shoot daggers at him. As the seconds tick by, he feels his hands grow clammy as his nerves begin to kick up and he wonders if he should count his losses by letting her leave.

"So, how long do you plan on holding me hostage?" she demands.

He runs a hand through his hair and curses under his breath, wishing that this could be a movie where everything is wrapped up in ninety minutes and everyone lives happily ever after. Or that this moment was happening a decade and a half earlier when Harper would have been more than happy to kiss him and he would not be stuck in a closet trying to figure out the right words to form.

"I don't want us to end up like the characters from your latest book," he blurts out, the words thrown into the air before he can gain a handle on them. "I mean...what I mean is...oh, hell, I just don't want you to hate me forever."

She actually appears to be dumbfounded as her mouth opens and closes, trying to form a sentence to respond. Frowning, she relaxes her stance and her eyes show confusion instead of hatred. "What exactly do you mean?"

"_The kiss never should have happened. He knew it. She knew it. Too much had changed between them but yet, so much was the same. She was still that quirky girl who never fit in. He was still the family wizard who could never dream of a life without powers. It was never going to work out and it was time for one of them to cut the cord that bound them together. Straightening her jacket, rumpled from their actions, she gave him a lingering smile so soft that it did not seem to be there at all. 'For all the years I wished for this to happen, I'd trade them all if it meant it never would,' she said, her voice broken by promises never spoken. 'I'll be gone by morning. Don't try to find me.' And with that she was gone, chasing new dreams in a life that he would never share._"

A tear trickles down her cheek as she listens to him recite the last passage of her book verbatim. It was the ending to a much-loved series although not the one that was wanted by her editor and fans alike. Everyone wants the heroine to get together with her love interest and for him and her to ride off into the sunset for all of eternity. But when art imitates life, the only plausible thing to do is to take the actual event in question and warp in a way that fits its fictional counterpart. And that meant that the characters had to go their separate ways just like she and Justin had, making it real to her even if she did not include her fictional self slapping his character like she had done in Seattle.

"You read my books," is all she can say to the expectant expression on his face as he stares at her. "How many times did you read them? Even I can't remember what I wrote that well."

"It doesn't matter." He is embarrassed now. She can tell by the pink forming on the tips of his ears. "The point is, I know you hate me for things that were left unsaid and undone. As well as things that were done that never should have been done. I had no right to kiss you seven years ago and pretend like I hadn't played a role in the demise of whatever our relationship was at eighteen. I should've tried harder to apologize and I should've never let you disappear for another seven years. And you have every right to hate me but I really wish you wouldn't."

"I don't hate you. I never did," she says quietly, causing his eyes to immediately snap over and lock onto hers. "I was mad at you—mad at the world, really, to be more accurate—for a really long time. And just when I thought I was over it, you came sauntering back into my life in a place I thought I was safe in. I wanted to make you hurt that day, as much as you hurt me that last night I spent in New York. So, I said things that I was sure would make you walk away. But you kissed me instead so I had to take the more violent approach.

"Hating you never really worked for me and I've found that anger doesn't work when you're involved either. So, I worked at putting a shield up and building it as strong as I could on the off chance that we'd meet again. And just when I think that I'm ready to face you and that I won't feel a damn thing for you because of that shield, we actually come into contact with each other and everything goes down the drain. Because the sad truth is, I loved you at fifteen and I don't think I ever stopped," she finishes, tears now falling uninhibited down her face. "It also seems that fate seems intent on shoving us together."

They share a chuckle and he cautiously takes the three steps to stand directly in front of her, his hands lifting and his brushing away the streaks of wetness. "Since we're confessing things, you should know that you've been in my head since Seattle. They started out as brief flashes when I'd walk down the street, swearing I'd seen you but you'd be gone the moment I blinked. Now, they've become these dreams I have at night where I can feel your skin against mine and I can smell you in my pillows and I'm a mess when I wake up and realize you've never been in my apartment much less my bed. And I miss you all the more for it."

She smiles weakly and the breath is nearly stolen from her as she realizes that the same wetness has formed on his cheeks, both thrilled and sad at the knowledge that she was the one to cause it. Leaning forward and placing her hands on his shoulder for support, she raises herself high enough to tenderly touch each streak the tears have made with her lips. When she finishes, she returns to her earlier stance and uncertainty of what his reaction will be—she might have crossed a line that she had no idea was in place—causes her to slip her bottom lip between her teeth like she used to as a nervous child.

Before the uncertainty becomes to overbearing and she feels the need to run away, his hands move down to grasp each side of his neck and his thumbs are making patterns on her pulse points. "Just try not to hit me again," he whispers teasingly right before his lips crash down on hers.

Hitting him is the last thing on her mind as her arms reclaim their rightful place around his neck and his hands drop to her waist, pulling her closer and lifting her to where the tips of her toes barely make contact with the ground. Their lips dance, their tongues duel. Moans and sighs can be heard as each tries to gain control over the other. The salt from their tears have mixed with the whiskey and the champagne both consumed and something else so indescribable that it could only be qualified as a taste unique to them. The tremors in his spine and legs are back, stronger than before, and he has to back against a wall before they cause his collapse. She can feel the ties on her soul and heart being cut and she feels lighter than she has in years.

They pull apart from the drugging sensations the kiss has caused within, not because they want to but because they have to if they want to breathe and live for another taste. Despite the fact that there is no need to, they keep their hold on one another as if both are afraid of the other disappearing if they were to let go. Justin peppers short chaste kisses on her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, and her lips, anything he can that will let her know that he will never leave her again. The fact that she is letting him instead of committing another violent act directed his way is proof that she is starting to believe it.

When they leave the janitor's closet, they are the epitome of what young lovers look like. And while they are nowhere near perfect—he will sometimes use her fear of him leaving against her in a fight, she will proceed to use his feelings of being a disappointment to retaliate—they will remain strong and work together to keep what they have. Because they both know what life apart feels like and neither wishes to return.

A week after the wedding that decided their fate, Justin and Harper returned to the Waverly Sub Station hand in hand. Jerry and Theresa Russo enveloped the woman who had been like a daughter to them at one point in time as they apologized for the bigger picture that went unseen. Max Russo simply shook his head with amusement at his older brother and wore a look on his face that made you wonder if he knew more than he was letting on. And then there was Alex Russo, who stole Harper and refused to let Justin anywhere near her best friend until she was certain there had been no coercion on his part. As for the rest of the world who wanted to know how the reclusive author who claimed to never have the desire to get married found her soul mate, it is simply written on the last page of the last book HJ Darling published.

_How they fell in love was simply in three acts. Act one was that she had to learn to let him go. In act two, he realized that it was he all along who was still hanging on. And in act three, this was the most important so pay attention, as it is the last, they learned that they had made room for the future in letting go of all the mistakes of the past. For she was thirty-two when he stumbled upon her again and it is the only day that either of them can remember clearly._


End file.
